Thunderbird On June 5th, 2000, AMD released the new Athlon with the Thunderbird core. This was the first core to incorporate an on-die L2 cache, use the Socket A/462 form, and it was also the last generation to be branded by true clockspeed. The Thunderbird core was produced on a .18 micron process and contained 37 million transisitors. This new core also produced less heat than the K7 core.
Athlon with Thunderbird core
Specifications:
| Release date | June 5th, 2000 |
| Core name | Thunderbird |
| Number of transistors | ~37 Million |
| Manufacturing Process | .18� |
| Location of L2 cache | On-die |
| Amount of L2 cache | 256kb |
| Package | Slot A, Socket A/462 |
| Official clock speeds | 750-1466 MHz |
Palomino
First released on May 18th, 2001, the Palomino was only avaiable for notebooks. On October 9th, 2001, AMD released the new Palomino for desktops. Intel's new pipeline in the Pentium 4 initiated the end of the the megahertz wars between the two companies. Intel's new pipeline allowed them to scale or increase the frequency or the Pentium 4 with ease. The longer pipeline, which consisted of 20 stages performed less work per clock though, making the processor less efficient. To counter this, AMD integrated QuantiSpeed Architecture which allows the Athlon XP to do more work per clock than previous processors.
Palomino Athlon XP 1800+
Specifications:
| Release date | October 9th, 2000 |
| Core name | Palomino |
| Number of transistors | ~37.5 Million |
| Manufacturing Process | .18� |
| Location of L2 cache | On-die |
| Amount of L2 cache | 256kb |
| Package | Socket A/462 |
| Official clock speeds | 1400-1733 MHz |
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